Ultimate Religious Ideas §9. When, on the sea-shore, we note how the hulls of distant vesselsare hidden below the horizon, and how, of still remoter vessels, only theuppermost sails are visible, we may conceive with tolerable clearness theslight curvature of that portion of the sea's surface which lies before us.
But when we try to follow out in imagination this curved surface as it actuallyexists, slowly bending round until all its meridians meet in a point eightthousand miles below our feet, we find ourselves utterly baffled. We cannotconceive in its real form and magnitude even that small segment of our globewhich extends a hundred miles on every side of us, much less the globe asa whole. The piece of rock on which we stand can be mentally representedwith something like completeness: we are able to think of its top, its sides,and its under surface at the same time, or so nearly at the same time thatthey seem present in consciousness together; and so we can form what we calla conception of the rock. But to do the like with the Earth is impossible.
If even to imagine the antipodes as at that distant place in space whichit actually occupies, is beyond our power much more beyond our power mustit be at the same time to imagine all other remote points on the Earth'ssurface as in their actual places. Yet we commonly speak as though we hadan idea of the Earth -- as though we could think of it in the same way thatwe think of minor objects.
What conception, then, do we form of it? the reader may ask. That itsname calls up in us some state of consciousness is unquestionable; and ifthis state of consciousness is not a conception, properly so called, whatis it? The answer seems to be this: -- We have learnt by indirect methodsthat the Earth is a sphere; we have formed models approximately representingits shape and the distribution of its parts; usually when the Earth is referredto, we either think of an indefinitely extended mass beneath our feet, orelse, leaving out the actual Earth, we think of a body like a terrestrialglobe; but when we seek to imagine the Earth as it really is, we join thesetwo ideas as well as we can -- such perception as our eyes give us of theEarth's surface we couple with the conception of a sphere. And thus we formof the Earth not a conception properly so called, but only a symbolic conception.(*)<* Those who may have before met with this term, will perceive that itis here used in quite a different sense.>
A large proportion of our conceptions, including all those of much generality,are of this order. Great magnitudes, great durations, great numbers, arenone of them actually conceived, but are all of them conceived more or lesssymbolically; and so, too, are all those classes of objects of which we predicatesome common fact. When mention is made of any individual man, a tolerablycomplete idea of him is formed. If the family he belongs to be spoken of,probably but a part of it will be represented in thought: under the necessityof attending to that which is said about the family, we realize in imaginationonly its most important or familiar members, and pass over the rest witha nascent consciousness which we know could, if requisite, be made complete.
Should something be remarked of the class, say farmers, to which this familybelongs, we neither enumerate in thought all the individuals contained inthe class, nor believe that we could do so if required; but we are contentwith taking some few samples of it, and remembering that these could be indefinitelymultiplied. Supposing the subject of which something is predicated be Englishmen,the answering state of consciousness is a still more inadequate representative.
Yet more remote is the likeness of the thought to the thing, if referencebe made to Europeans or to human beings. And when we come to propositionsconcerning the mammalia, or conceding the whole of the vertebrata, or concerningall organic beings, the unlikenesses of our conceptions to the realitiesbecome extreme.
Throughout which series of instances we see that as the number of objectsgrouped together in thought increases, the concept, formed of a few typicalsamples joined with the notion of multiplicity, becomes more and more a meresymbol; not only because it gradually ceases to represent the size of thegroup, but also because, as the group grows more heterogeneous, the typicalsamples thought of are less like the average objects which the group contains.
This formation of symbolic conceptions, which inevitably arises as wepass from small and concrete objects to large and to discrete ones, is mostlya useful, and indeed necessary, process. When, instead of things whose attributescan be tolerably well united in a single state of consciousness, we haveto deal with things whose attributes are too vast or numerous to be so united,we must either drop in thought part of their attributes, or else not thinkof them at all -- either form a more or less symbolic conception, or no conception.
We must predicate nothing of objects too great or too multitudinous to bementally represented, or we must make our predications by the help of extremelyinadequate representations of them.
But while by doing this we are enabled to form general propositions, andso to reach general conclusions, we are perpetually led into danger, andvery often into error. We mistake our symbolic conceptions for real ones;and so are betrayed into countless false inferences. Not only is it thatin proportion as the concept we form of any thing, or class of things, misrepresentsthe reality, we are apt to be wrong in any assertion we make respecting thereality; but it is that we are led to suppose we have truly conceived manythings which we have conceived only in this fictitious way; and then to confoundwith these some things which cannot be conceived in any way. How we fallinto this error almost unavoidably it will be needful here to observe.
